How to get rid of old (dual) boot hdd used to clone Win 10 to ssd

Hello All,

My Lenovo desktop came with Windows 10 Home preinstalled on a 1 TB HDD. Last December I cloned the Windows 10 partition to a SSD and somehow managed to boot from it as the main partition, C: on the volume I named Win10-SSD, leaving the old volume renamed Win10-HDD as D:. Note: when booting the computer I can still choose between both options in the Windows 10 boot menu, the SSD being the default. I'm running Windows 10 Home version 20H2 Build 19042.

As it works fine and I no longer need the HDD as fallback, I'd like now to reformat completely the 1 TB disk, but the disk manager shows two partitions which I suspect are still used in the startup process: the EFI partition and likely also the OEM partition (as I'm still getting the unnecessary OEM logo then splash screen with circling dot 'hourglass' at startup). The SSD however only shows the Windows partition and a small recovery partition (of any use?). See screenshot:


Can you guide me in the steps necessary to work with the SSD only (I guess other boot manager / loader / etc partition must be created and chained ?). I wouldn't mind getting rid of the Lenovo interim boot step also, and I don't require to keep the 24 GB recovery partition at the end of the HDD. Thanks in advance for your guidance !

PS: when running bcdedit I'm getting this output:

Code:

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume2
path                    \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-us
inherit                 {globalsettings}
default                 {current}
resumeobject            {7aae8355-960d-11eb-8af8-b8aeed25f4c5}
displayorder            {current}
                        {1debaa07-46a9-11ea-97fc-b8aeed25f4c5}
toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
timeout                 5

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \windows\system32\winload.efi
description             Windows 10 SSD
locale                  en-us
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
isolatedcontext         Yes
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \windows
resumeobject            {7aae8355-960d-11eb-8af8-b8aeed25f4c5}
nx                      OptIn
bootmenupolicy          Standard

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {1debaa07-46a9-11ea-97fc-b8aeed25f4c5}
device                  partition=D:
path                    \WINDOWS\system32\winload.efi
description             Windows 10 HDD
locale                  en-us
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
isolatedcontext         Yes
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice                partition=D:
systemroot              \WINDOWS
resumeobject            {1debaa06-46a9-11ea-97fc-b8aeed25f4c5}
nx                      OptIn
bootmenupolicy          Standard

First we need to see the output of:

Code:

diskpart
list disk

That will tell us if the SSD is MBR or GPT.

Samuria said:

The key is to remove the old drive and see if windows still boots I suspect it wont but until your sure you can do anything

I confirm I did try that some time ago and it did not boot. It got stuck with a message like no operating system found, please insert a disk (as far as I can remember).

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NavyLCDR said:

First we need to see the output of diskpart list disk.That will tell us if the SSD is MBR or GPT.

Code:

DISKPART> list disk  
Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt  
--------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---  
Disk 0    Online          931 GB      0 B        *  
Disk 1    Online          465 GB  1024 KB        *  
Disk 2    No Media           0 B      0 B

I think this confirms both are GPT (incl. Disk1 which is the SSD).

Please run:
Tuneup.bat - Click here to go to the BSOD batch repository to download and run this batch file.

DiskParInfo.bat - Click here to go to the BSOD batch repository to download and run this batch file.

zbook said:

Please run:
Tuneup.bat - Click here to go to the BSOD batch repository to download and run this batch file.
DiskParInfo.bat - Click here to go to the BSOD batch repository to download and run this batch file.

Thanks zbook, I will run the batches when I can get hold again of the computer, and post outputs in this thread.

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Samuria said:

You need to omove the uefi partition to c drive Move EFI partition to another drive – Windows 10 | Ivan Tomica

Thanks Samuria, this looks like what I need indeed. But to take no risk, I'll wait first for the feedback of zbook to the requested info collection for his review.

AlterMind said:

I confirm I did try that some time ago and it did not boot. It got stuck with a message like no operating system found, please insert a disk (as far as I can remember).

- - - Updated - - -

Code:

DISKPART> list disk  
Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt  
--------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---  
Disk 0    Online          931 GB      0 B        *  
Disk 1    Online          465 GB  1024 KB        *  
Disk 2    No Media           0 B      0 B

I think this confirms both are GPT (incl. Disk1 which is the SSD).

You need to shrink the C: drive partition on disk 1 by 100 MB, create a new EFI system partition in the 100 MB empty space. Format it as FAT32. Assign a drive letter to it. Then use the bcdboot command to write boot files to the new EFI system partition.

NavyLCDR said:

You need to shrink the C: drive partition on disk 1 by 100 MB, create a new EFI system partition in the 100 MB empty space. Format it as FAT32. Assign a drive letter to it. Then use the bcdboot command to write boot files to the new EFI system partition.

NavyLCDR
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that is exactly what I Instructed on my previous post.